Taylor

If you give millions of seriously underwater homeowners a new equity position in their properties by reducing their principal mortgage debt, will they keep paying on their loans and avoid foreclosure? Call it a pipe dream or a significant model for other lenders and investors, but one company says it has found an important combination: Modify underwater borrowers' loans so that their payments are reduced to a manageable amount and cut their principal debt over time, but make the deal dependent on their scrupulous on-time monthly payments of the new amount plus sharing of a portion of any future profit they make on the house sale.

Three days after Walt Disney Studios said it would incur a $200-million loss on "John Carter," the film's star, Taylor Kitsch, was still licking his wounds. He had just returned to his Beverly Hills hotel, cheeks flushed following a boxing workout where a fellow gym rat had tried to console him about the box-office dud. "This guy came up to me and goes, 'Next one. Don't worry about it, you'll be fine,' " Kitsch chafed. "I'm like, 'I'm not worried about it, man. I didn't market the movie.

Not long after 19-year-old country-pop sensation Taylor Swift walked off with the Country Music Assn.'s biggest awards in Nashville, the American Music Awards handed her more trophies to add to her growing collection. Swift, who came in with a field-leading six nominations, landed all but one of those, including the evening's top honor as artist of the year. She also was named favorite female pop-rock, country and adult contemporary artist. Her "Fearless" CD collected the favorite album trophy.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The litany of abuses was chilling: mass murder, rape, sexual slavery. Forcing children to fight. Chopping off victims' limbs. Former Liberian President Charles Taylor's conviction Thursday by an international tribunal in the Netherlands on charges of abetting such war crimes in the West African country of Sierra Leone sent a powerful message to other warlords that they will eventually face justice, human rights activists and prosecutors say. But it also highlights what can be a wrenching tension between pursuing justice or peace first in some of the world's most violent, chaotic corners.

Jon Embree's first thought was about his Colorado team. The second thought: what a great father he had been. Colorado's 17-14 victory over Utah on Friday ended the Buffaloes' 24-game losing streak outside its home state. And it also put Embree's son, Taylor , in the Pac-12 Conference championship game. UCLA, which starts Taylor at wide receiver, was handed a spot in the title game as the South Division representative when the Utes missed a last-second field-goal try against Colorado.

So much for Lawrence Taylor and retirement. The 10-time Pro Bowl linebacker on Monday reached a tentative agreement on a two-year contract that will have him back in a New York Giant uniform for a 13th season, his business manager said. The two sides have been close to reaching an agreement for more than a week. Taylor, who became a free agent after last season, will reportedly receive almost $2.5 million a year, about the same terms the club paid in February to keep quarterback Phil Simms.

The unofficial NFL draft season, and the three months of speculation that comes with it, doesn't start in earnest until mid-January. But for Taylor Mays, the pre-draft roller-coaster ride started 11 months ago when the two-time All-American safety made the surprising announcement that he was returning to USC for a fourth and final season. "It's funny," Mays said this week. "I've been, what's the word? Scrutinized." Picked apart might be more accurate. The 6-foot-3, 235-pound Mays was projected as a possible top-five pick in 2009, a key player for a dominant defense who was too physically gifted for teams to pass up. As he prepares for today's game against Arizona, his last appearance at the Coliseum, Mays' stock has fallen, though not precipitously.

In regard to the gutless act of toadying to a self-righteous pack of leftists who insisted that Taylor's name be removed because he warned Americans of the Communist rats who were using the film industry to promote Stalinism: I am delighted. Taylor would not want his name on a building occupied by the type of people who have ruined the film industry. Taylor, like John Wayne and Gary Cooper, told the truth about what was happening. Another person who helped run the Reds out of Hollywood was a guy named Ronnie Reagan.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor ordered his militias to eat the flesh of captured enemies and United Nations soldiers, a former close aide testified at Taylor's war crimes trial in The Hague. Joseph "ZigZag" Marzah, who described himself as Taylor's former death squad commander, gave graphic details of atrocities in Liberia and Sierra Leone at the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. He has described how he killed so many men, women and children that he lost count, and said he had slit open the stomachs of pregnant women on Taylor's orders.

Lincoln High School's Steve Taylor likes to pass the time during the spring and early summer playing baseball. "When the weather is nice, why just sit around doing nothing?" he says. "It keeps me in shape, I like the competition and it's fun." Taylor, a left-handed hitting center fielder, has been having a lot of fun. The senior is hitting .372 with 2 home runs and 14 RBIs. He leads the Hornets in stolen bases with 13 and has been thrown out just twice.

Sometimes bigger is better when buying art by committee. At this year's Collectors Committee weekend, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art bought $2.5 million worth of artwork to add to its permanent collection, including two larger-than-life works: a 60-foot-long Robert Rauschenberg screenprint that shows a collage of newspaper articles from 1970, bought for $775,000; and a nearly 10-foot-tall elevator surround that Louis Sullivan designed around...

Lindsay Lohan is all systems go for "Liz & Dick," the Lifetime TV movie that will see her playing icon Elizabeth Taylor during her whirlwind romance with actor Richard Burton.  As Lohan's probation for a 2007 DUI ended in late March, the actress was cleared for a work permit in Canada, where the film is set to shoot. And though the actress has been talking for a while now about preparing for the role, she and the Lifetime network on Monday shared the good news: She's officially ready to put on those white diamonds.

The sweet but not too syrupy romance of "The Lucky One,"starring a buffed Zac Efron and a blond Taylor Schilling, is about love emerging from the war-ravaged rubble of a young soldier's heart and the unlikely things that save him. Directed by Scott Hicks ("Shine"), with Will Fetters adapting the Nicholas Sparks novel, this is the latest and the best Sparks-inspired film to come along since "The Notebook" won over hearts, if not minds, in 2004. The Sparks-styled romance has almost become its own movie genre - predictable, pure of heart, sentimental and never straying from the boy-meets-girl basics, or the surface, for that matter - and in that "The Lucky One" delivers.

USC's new players Name; Pos.; Ht.; Wt.; Previous school; Comment Strahinja Gavrilovic; F; 6-8; 220; San Diego Rock Academy; Member of Serbian youth national teams can provide an inside presence. *Ari Stewart; F; 6-7; 205; Wake Forest; Averaged 8.5 points and 4.4 rebounds as freshman in Atlantic Coast Conference. Brendyn Taylor; G; 6-2; 170; Fairfax High; Only high school player in class averaged 18 points, 3.5 assists and five rebounds last season. J.T. Terrell; G; 6-3; 180; Peninsula College; Could provide much-needed outside threat.

The overhaul of USC's basketball roster continued Wednesday when Los Angeles Fairfax High guard Brendyn Taylor signed a national letter with the Trojans. Taylor joins a class that includes November signees J.T. Terrell, a guard from Peninsula College in Washington, and Strahinja Gavrilovic, a Serbian forward who attends San Diego Rock Academy but did not play on the basketball team. "All of them are high-level players," USC Coach Kevin O'Neill said. "I like the class very much, especially with our guys coming back from injury and the guys who were sitting out. " Taylor, 6 feet 2 and 170 pounds, averaged 18 points a game last season.

Brendyn Taylor, a guard from Los Angeles Fairfax High, has signed a national letter of intent with USC, the school announced Wednesday, the first day of the regular signing period for basketball. Taylor, 6-feet-2 and 170 pounds, averaged 18 points a game last season. "He has a great upside," Coach Kevin O'Neill said in a statement. "He is an athletic wing whose best days are ahead of him. " Taylor, the son of former NBA and ABA player Brian Taylor, is part of a class that also includes November signees J.T. Terrell and Strahinja Gavrilovic.

The only truly surprising thing about this week's "TV Reality Star Commits Suicide" headlines is that they haven't appeared sooner. The death of Russell Armstrong, who appeared with his wife, Taylor, and their 5-year-old daughter, Kennedy, on Bravo's "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," has given the world of situational reality TV pause. Like a number of those participating in the endlessly self-spawning franchise, the Armstrongs were unstable both maritally and financially. Not surprisingly, the pressures of the show, which, according to friends, demanded that they play up their problems rather than try to solve them, did not improve things.

About the shootings: It's the guns, stupid. JULIE D. TAYLOR Los Angeles

Reporting from Tucson — The Dodgers sent a part of their team to the Phoenix suburb of Surprise on Friday to face the Kansas City Royals. Another group traveled more than two hours from the team's spring-training complex to Tucson, where the Chicago White Sox were waiting for them. Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier were in the second group. So were fellow starters Dee Gordon, Juan Rivera, Mark Ellis and A.J. Ellis. Veteran reserves Tony Gwynn Jr. and Jerry Hairston Jr. also made the 130-mile trip.

Last week in The Hague, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, found the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga guilty of recruiting and using child soldiers in the armed conflict in that country, sealing his fate as the court's first convicted war criminal. At the same time, the viral video "Kony 2012"has seemingly achieved its goal of making Joseph Kony, another rebel commander facing an ICC arrest warrant, notorious for his alleged crimes, including the abduction of an estimated 30,000 children for hisLord's Resistance Army.